Clark Richert, Colorado’s most important painter, died Friday, a man who was the first artist colony of his kind and used his art to model complex ideas about math and science for decades. He was 80 years old.
“We’ll never see people like him again,” said Margaret Newman, Richert’s best friend of over 60 years.
Richert—who is survived by partner Barb and three children—is revered as a leading creative force, and Colorado’s leading voice in abstraction, who helped inspire thousands of artists as an instructor at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design.
He still worked in installations and galleries until the end of his life, and his art is on display in Marfa, Texas.
“Many people know Clark as a brilliant and accomplished artist, a great and wise teacher and a kind and generous man,” Barb Ettner, his partner, said in a statement. “We in his family have known him for these things as well. But also as a wonderful father, husband, brother and uncle. We are saddened by our loss but feel very fortunate to have known him and welcomed him into our lives. He leaves such a huge hole in the community and in our hearts, (and) we are all better to know him.”
Richer, a resident of Wichita, Kansas, grew up in a family of mathematicians and scientists and believed he would follow in their footsteps.
This was until his family took a trip to New York and Richer saw an exhibition of Mark Rothko.
“He was overwhelmed with emotion and started crying at the show,” said Rachel Betz, co-owner of Rule Gallery, who has collaborated with Richert for 30 years. “His whole life changed in that moment.”
His friends and students said Richer was always thinking outside the box, coming up with concepts years before they became mainstream. In 1965, he famously helped found Drop City, the legendary colony of hippie artists outside of Trinidad where creatives could gather and exchange meals and ideas, undisturbed by the outside world.
“Our long-term vision was that Drop City would serve as a ‘seed’ for future societies that would sprout all over the world. The risks of trying to build an alternative culture in America that I encountered before,” Reichert told The Denver Post in 2009.
Although Richer never became a mathematician or scientist, his work was heavily influenced by their ideas and theories—as well as by local folklore and environmental science.
“He was a very multi-dimensional thinker,” said Amy Harmon, an old friend who helped Richer assemble one of his final projects, a sculpture and light installation in Denver. “Some people think there are two or three dimensions; I think there are 13 dimensions,” he said.
He had a unique ability to transform high-brow concepts into art that the average person could still understand.
Denver Post art critic Ray Mark Rinaldi wrote in 2013: “The work is a charming pleasure to look at, yet the bulk of it is rooted in numerical theories that most people would find baffling.” For the most difficult spatial concepts. “
The artist has also made his mark on the countless students over the years who attended Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design.
Jason Holcher, a former student who considered Richert a mentor and close friend, said Richert subscribed to the Socratic method of teaching—talking to students, opening ideas and helping potential artists reach their own conclusions.
“Clark had a real ability to help you see things that were there but you didn’t even notice,” he said. “He had a really rich approach to the way the world works.”
This meant fostering a collaborative environment, something that remained a core value in his life.
“He always believed that people are better together,” Betz said.
She met Newman Prichert when he was just 19 on the University of Colorado campus and knew right away that he was the most famous person she had ever met. Over the years, they became like siblings, quarreling, joking and laughing.
“He was so different from anyone I’ve met in my life,” she said.
The hallmark of their friendship over the years has been the Friday night movie club. Before the pandemic, they would go to see foreign films – Korean, Japanese or Native American films set far from Hollywood.
“He’s always wanted to see something extraordinary,” Newman said.
His friends said that Richer was a unique person, because he was original but had no arrogance or arrogance. He wanted to lift all the boats, not generate competition.
Clark was someone who had no enemies; “He had no enemies,” said Valerie Santerli, director and co-owner of Roll Gallery. She has spent Christmas with the artist and his family for the past decade. This year, however, she had nowhere to be.
“There is not a single person who does not love and appreciate what he has had to give,” Santerli said.